Hong Kong Two

Hello hello. Here’s the second part to the Hong Kong update, albeit slightly late.

On the Saturday in Hong Kong, we went on a tour up one of the mountains that overlooks the place and we passed some graveyards and the prices of the plots were explained to use which makes it seem very expensive to die in Hong Kong! Just a word of warning for you there. We had a good photo opportunity up the mountain, which we all took advantage of, some coming out better than others but there were quite a few good group shots taken, some ended up on Facebook while others remain on cameras, so that’s good. We lost the girls soon after that so I went with Matt and Mark to one of the bars/restaurants on the mountain and sampled the local beer but the waitress took ages to bring them over and we had to meet up with the others fairly soon so some very quick drinking took place… but we were still late!

After that we headed on down to another harbour and were told about the boat people who think it’s very unlucky to step out on the land, Hong Kong seems to be a breeding ground for superstition. We took some pictures there too. It was so hot though, everywhere was very very humid despite the lack of any real sun so we soon went to a market place after the boating area. The market was alright, we wandered round and all about an oriental design of our names with the obligatory (made up) description of what our names mean and what kind of personality we are supposed to have. Then we were off to a restaurant for dinner, it was a high restaurant that apparently had a revolving dining area but that just didn’t happen. There were some great high views of the city, a couple of really great photographs were taken, taking in the mountains and the setting sun and all that. The meal was ok, it was free so excellent really! Then back to the hotel.

A while later we went back out to check out the mountain view but the night time version of it, so we took the mountain tram thing to really sample the atmosphere. We got kind of lost trying to find the station but we got there eventually, all adds to the adventure. The tram was so much fun and very steep, it didn’t really need to use its accelerator on the way down but I think it did anyway. Anyhow, up at the top of the mountain, we wanted to go to the bar we were at earlier but it was closed so we went to another, slightly more classy established and sampled the local cocktails (we’re such a refined bunch). I had a Chardonnay Clear (I think that’s what it was called… and spelled), it had vodka, chardonnay, orange juice, lime juice and something else, I think. Really really nice. Matt then decided to have one called The Peak (named after the bar) so lots of us had a quick taste of it and loved it so it was Peaks all round! Zoe, Izzy, Keely and Charlene then left a little while later leaving myself, Mark, Matt and Holly (Bukky decided to stay at the hotel) to partake in more Peak drinking in the balcony area before making a very late, rushed dash towards the tram station for the last tram (after paying, of course).

We tried to meet the others in town but they were involved in the taxi ride of death/danger and so went back to the hotel, we decided to carry on the evening in some other bars in town and also tried to keep in touch with the England football/rugby games. There was this one bar full of Italians and French arguing over the slightest throw-in or method of evacuation but it was a good atmosphere anyway. After leaving a certain bar we got back to the hotel at around 4:30 and Matt decided he needed an M&Ms fix so he went to the shop to get some of those, Holly went back to her room and Mark and I went to ours. Matt soon came back with an abundance of chocolate and then attempted to phone the girls to see if they had a good night, he made loads of attempts, no idea how many people he ended up calling but he got to the girls eventually, Mark and I were shouting our protests towards him about how bad an idea it was to call people at 4:30 but such logic isn’t really useful at such a time, so it seems.

Nothing much happened on the Sunday, after apologising to the girls we went on another tour to a temple and a bridge before heading over to the airport for our flight to Auckland.

So, yeah, Hong Kong was great. I’ll update about this week in Auckland at some point soon, I need to catch up with e-mails and other such things, already been given orders to send some postcards out so that should be done as well. I’m seeing Snow Patrol tomorrow night with Keely, so that should be good and then most of us are flying out to Wellington on Saturday to live there for a few months before we do some serious touring around the North Island. Charlene and Izzy are kicking off their touring now so they should meet back up with us in Wellington in a week or so. All good.